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jatropha tree

11th August 2008, 05:02 pm

I would prefer to stop coal burning plants and make a serious effort into solar, geokinetic, and geothermal sources to generate the energy we need. I just read a story on CNN.com about a kind of tree that you can press the seeds of and have it produce fuel oil you can use without any further processing. Sounds awesome! I read the story all the way through and by the end, the math was bugging me. I did some thinking and some relatively weak number crunching. By my rough calculations, you would have to plant over 60,000 plants, just to supply the fuel required to run the 4 tractors mentioned in the story.

  • 4 tractors
  • 120 gallons each
  • 480 gallons of fuel per day
  • 2,400 gallons per week, guessing on 5 days of work per week averaged over the course of the year
  • 124,800 gallons of fuel = 2,400 x 52 weeks in a year
  • jatropha plants produce 2 gallons per tree per year, so:
  • 62,400 trees would be required to produce just the fuel required to run the 4 tractors mentioned in the story. Not even taking into consideration the energy required to process the seeds.

Right now they’ve got 176 trees growing.. somewhat short of being free from diesel purchases. Every little bit helps, and I’m of the mindset that it’s better to do something *now* rather than say that since there’s no perfect solution, we should do nothing. Definitely do something now… just.. keep looking for better solutions. I mean, I guess I should be happy that there are people looking into biodiesel fuels that use a plant that isn’t something I already eat. Using food crops for fuel instead of food is the dumbest idea we’ve had in a long time.

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